Creating Invisible Workspaces

Applies to: SharePoint Workspace 2010 | Visual Studio 2008

In this article
Overview of Creating Invisible Workspaces
Creating an Invisible Workspace from a GSA
Modifying a Workspace to be Invisible
Creating an Invisible Workspace and Adding Tools

An application can create or modify workspaces so that they are not visible in the SharePoint Workspace user interface. This makes it possible for an application to exclusively process the data in the workspace and minimizes the possibility of a user interacting with the data directly through the SharePoint Workspace user interface. In addition to making the workspace invisible, your application should suppress workspace, tool, and member alerts. Otherwise, users may follow alerts to open the workspace in the SharePoint Workspace user interface.

Overview of Creating Invisible Workspaces

You can create a Groove 2007-compatible workspace that is not visible in the SharePoint Workspace user interface and you can specify that workspace alerts are suppressed. There are three ways to create an invisible workspace:

  1. Create an invisible Groove 2007-compatible workspace from a Groove workspace template or archive (.gsa) file by using the GrooveSpaces.CreateFromGSA2 or CreateFromGSAByRef2 operation.

  2. Create a visible Groove 2007-compatible workspace using the SharePoint Workspace user interface and then modify it to be invisible using the GrooveSpaces.Update2 operation

  3. Create an invisible Groove 2007-compatible workspace using the GrooveSpaces.Create2 operation and then add tools to the workspace using the GrooveTools.Create2 operation.

To set the workspace to be invisible, you must specify the following values in the Space2 object, which is a parameter for these GrooveSpaces operations:

  • Visible element set to false.

  • AlertLevel element set to "Off".

  • DisplayMemberAwareness element set to false.

  • Optionally, set the DownloadToAllMyDevices element to true. If workspace members use the same account on multiple systems, this ensures that the workspace will be on all of these systems. Otherwise, there is no mechanism to fetch the workspace to a second device.

Once you create an invisible workspace or modify a workspace to be invisible, the workspace is invisible for all current and future members.

Creating an Invisible Workspace from a GSA

A Groove workspace archive or template is a binary file that defines the tools in a workspace. It can also define workspace members and tool data. When an application is creating an invisible workspace, the workspace archive should not specify workspace members because there is no programmatic mechanism to re-invite the members.

You can create a workspace archive by using the SharePoint Workspace user interface or by using the GrooveSpaces.ExportAsArchive operation. If you create the archive using the SharePoint Workspace user interface, you should not select the Include members option. If you create the archive using the ExportAsArchive operation, you should set the IncludeMembers parameter to false.

Note

If a workspace archive .gsa file is created from an invisible workspace using the GrooveSpaces.ExportAsArchive operation, any workspace created from this archive will be invisible by default. Consequently, if a user interactively creates a workspace from this archive, it will be created as an invisible workspace. If an application creates a workspace from this archive using the GrooveSpaces.CreateFromGSA or GrooveSpaces.CreateFromGSAByRef operation, the created workspace will be invisible. In contrast, if an application creates a workspace from this archive using the GrooveSpaces.CreateFromGSA2 or GrooveSpaces.CreateFromGSAByRef2 operation, the Space2 parameter controls whether the workspace is visible or invisible.

Modifying a Workspace to be Invisible

An application can convert any Groove 2007-compatible workspace into an invisible workspace with the GrooveSpaces.Update2 operation. The workspace can originally be created by using the SharePoint Workspace user interface or by using Groove Web Services.

Creating an Invisible Workspace and Adding Tools

The GrooveTools.Create2 creates an empty Groove 2007-compatible workspace. The Space2 element controls whether the workspace is visible or invisible and whether workspace alerts are displayed to the user.

Note

The GrooveTools.Create2 operation cannot add a custom designed Forms tool to a workspace. Consequently, if your application creates a workspace with a custom designed Forms tool, it should create it from a .gsa workspace archive instead of by using the Create2 operation.